Auctora

Streamlining the recruiter experience at career fairs

In today’s world, recruiters have issues compiling and sorting through resumes from different job applicants (screening, sorting, and scheduling). This is a 3 part problem that starts with the screening process usually at a job or career fairs. The 2nd part is going through all the resumes and sorting the best candidates from the list, who are potential recruits. The 3rd part of the process is the scheduling of interviews. These processes take a lot of time, money and personnel and there is no single solution that streamlines them. Currently, large firms have very robust recruiting departments to manage these process and handle the volume of the applicants.

Our solution is to provide a digital tool that will automate screening, sorting, and scheduling for recruiters. Auctora will automatically screen candidate profiles in order to reduce wasted time for both candidates and recruiters. For sorting, recruiters will be able to pull up a digital profile of each candidate they talk to while working the career fair and rate the candidate quickly, easily and discretely. The scheduling aspect of our product will automatically cross-reference the candidate profile with the company application database.

Market Opportunity

In US, career fairs are the largest source of talent acquisition, where more than 1 million candidates are recruited every year. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), the number of candidates recruited in career fairs is expected to grow by 9.6% annually. There are about 18,000 large businesses (500 or more employees and $10 mil or more in revenue) and 200,000 medium-sized businesses (100-400 employees and $1 mil to $10 mil in revenue) in the US. Based on NACE’s reports, about 97% of these companies recruit at job fairs or on-campus recruiting events.

In 2014, $1.2 billion was spent on career fairs for:

Collecting resume books

Transferring paper resumes of interviewed candidates to company’s internal system

Technology and software applications used in career fairs

Marketing in career fairs

This is the addressable market and costs that Auctora can either replace or eliminate for companies recruiting at campus career fairs.

Competitive Landscape

Auctora is an automated recruiting tool seamlessly screens, sorts, and schedules candidates so that corporate recruiters can utilize their time more effectively while sourcing job applicants.

No dealing with paper resumes; no back-and-forth emails between recruiters and candidates – welcome to recruiting in the 21st century!

The Design Approach

Using basic geometric shapes circle and triangle as the visual representation in order to create the solid foundation of Auctora’s brand identity.

Final Thoughts

The entrepreneurship class led by Greg Gottesman of Madrona Venture Group was an exceptional learning experience for me as it provides me a chance to collaborate with Computer Science and MBA Business students to start a new company from the ground up — something that I couldn't get out of regular design classes alone. Throughout the quarter, each team member takes turns to pitch our product Auctora to different guests every week, who comprised of CEOs, venture capitalists, lawyers, and journalists. At the end of the class, we presented a working demo of Auctora with the business plan to venture capitalists at the Madrona office.

Today we live in a technology-driven society, yet college recruiting is still stuck in the Stone Age. Recruiters experience serious pain points on a daily basis. Auctora is the solution we delivered after we found out that there is a large opportunity and, in fact, need, for optimization. Our team entered the "Sweet Sixteen" round of the 2015 Business Plan Competition, competing for the $25,000 Grand Prize with other 37 student-led startup teams.

Throughout the quarter, I learned a lot in communicating my ideas to non-designers, bridging the expectation gap of work timeline, taking the lead on designing a product and establishing basic understanding of entrepreneurship. At the end of the day, being compassionate of other team members and showing respect to others' expertise are some of the crucial attributes of a successful startup team, and having good communication is a good first step to start with.